Murkowski expects to retain seniority

Sen. Lisa Murkowski expects to be back in Washington next year with all of her seniority intact, including her position as top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The Alaska Republican told reporters that she got assurances she could keep the ranking member position during a meeting Monday with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Story Continued Below

"The conversation was very general and very friendly and very cordial and very assuring that you haven't lost anything around here Lisa, in terms of your seniority or the respect of your colleagues," Murkowski said.

"This is like being back in school after summer vacation and you're seeing people for the first time and you kind of say, 'So what did you do?'" she added. "And I had a little more to talk about then some of my other colleagues. But it was a very general conversation."

Several senators congratulated Murkowski as members gathered for the first post-election session Monday.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the lead of the GOP campaign operations, congratulated her. Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) walked off the floor with her to hear stories of some of the more unusual write-in votes, including people who substituted hearts for the dot on the letter ‘I’ in her last name. Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) gave her a bear hug as she boarded the underground Senate subway.

According to Murkowski’s campaign, the senator trails GOP nominee Joe Miller by 1,761 votes, with more than 40,000 absentee ballots to be counted.

"What I tell everybody is it's not over yet," she said. "We still have more votes to count. I haven't had a sip of champagne."

Murkowski said she had yet to speak with Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who helped spearhead Miller's upstart campaign to defeat her. She also said she had not heard from Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who is next in line to assume the top GOP spot on the Energy panel should she lose.

She also does not plan to seek the GOP leadership position lost after Miller defeated her in the Alaska primary. And she also knocked down speculation that she could move from the Energy Committee over to be the ranking member of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee.